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The Morning Skate: Strange Things Happen and a Veteran’s Regret

By Stu Hackel January 11, 2010 2:59 pmJanuary 11, 2010 2:59 pm

It was a strange weekend in the N.H.L., not the first, and certainly not the last. But we don’t often have games spliced in half as the Devils-Tampa Bay contest was on Friday and Sunday. Sunday’s resumption of the half-completed game, postponed because of a partial power failure, drew about 3,000 fans, wrote Dave Caldwell in The New York Times.

Dave wrote, “When asked if he had gone through something like this before, Jamie Langenbrunner, the Devils’ captain, smiled and said, ‘Maybe a street hockey game that was called due to darkness.’”

The Devils lost, 4-1, and rested Martin Brodeur in the Sunday portion. But New Jersey won in a weird way on Saturday in Montreal when, during overtime, Zach Parise broke his stick and had to fetch a new one from the bench. Had he not broken it, this winning goal …

would not have happened. But it did, ending in style a very entertaining game.

In Toronto, the Penguins took on the Maple Leafs and things don’t get stranger than this play …

… where Sergei Gonchar scores a goal that the officials don’t detect during play and then hooks the Leafs’ Alexei Ponikarovsky, who is awarded a penalty shot. But when the replay is checked, Gonchar’s goal is counted — and once a goal is scored the game clock is rolled back to the time when the goal is awarded. But penalties taken after a delayed goal call still must be served. But the penalty shot was changed to a minor to Gonchar since, as Glenn Healey correctly called it, two goals cannot be scored in one stoppage of play according to N.H.L. rules; had Ponikarovsky scored on his penalty shot, that’s exactly how the score sheet would read.

Rule 78.6 reads, “Only one goal can be awarded at any stoppage of play. If the apparent goal was scored by Team A, and is subsequently confirmed as a goal by the Video Goal Judge, any goal scored by Team B during the period of time between the apparent goal by Team A and the stoppage of play (Team B’s goal), the Team B goal would not be awarded.” The rules don’t specifically mention this penalty shot possibility, but that situation would have violated the rule, so the officials got it right.

Of course, you can take the view of CBC.ca’s puzzled Brandon Hicks, who wrote “You can’t have two goals happen during one stoppage of play — because it would (I’m pretty sure) cause a rupture in the space-time continuum so great that it would destroy the universe.” Or, at least, destroy the Leafs’ fading playoff hopes.

If you stayed up late to watch the Islanders Saturday night, you saw the strange spectacle of the Coyotes playing almost eight minutes short-handed on a five-minute major. Ed Jovanovski, who scored the game’s first goal, was assessed a major penalty and a game misconduct near the end of the first period for welcoming the Isles rookie John Tavares to the N.H.L. with his elbow as Tavares cut in on goal. The play ended with the Isles’ Kyle Okposo scoring to give them a 2-1 lead.

Coyotes Coach Dave Tippett did not put a Coyote in the box to serve Jovo’s major, which is permissible and occasionally happens when coaches don’t want to shorten their bench further for the full five minutes. But coaches do that at their risk and sometimes they get caught if there’s no stoppage of play near the end of a major so they can send someone over to the box.

This time, it was a bad risk. Phoenix killed the major but play continued for almost three minutes, until the 7:35 mark, which means that Phoenix played that entire time with four skaters. “I’ve never seen them go eight minutes without a whistle, but that’s funny how that goes sometimes,” Tippett said after the game (quoted by Jim Gintonio of The Arizona Republic). He probably didn’t think what happened next was too funny.

“Exhausted — and probably more than a little exasperated — Phoenix’s Martin Hanzel took a slashing penalty 7:35 into the period,” wrote Chris Botta on AOL Fanhouse. “The Jovanovski “five-minute” major was finally over, but now the Coyotes were short-handed again. Then Phoenix defenseman Adrian Aucoin committed a cross-checking penalty at 9:02. The Islanders scored on the 5-on-3 on a goal by Mark Streit …

and again on the 5-4 on a goal by Josh Bailey,

which made it 4-1 for the Isles. The Coyotes came back to tie the score with three in the third, which is how regulation ended, but the Islanders won the bonus point in the postgame skills competition. The Islanders have now grabbed 13 of their last 18 possible points, and, for the first time in a while, all three New York metropolitan area teams are playing good hockey. That in itself is strange.

I Wish I Knew What I Know Now Department: When he broke into the N.H.L., Mathieu Scheinder was considered a poor-man’s Chris Chelios. Schneider is more of a journeyman than Chelly — literally, since he has played for 10 different N.H.L. teams in his 21-year career. But both are still playing, and both are now in the A.H.L.

Schneider, 40, was unhappy with his lack of playing time in Vancouver, so he was shopped around by the Canucks and, finding no takers, they demoted him to their Winnipeg affiliate, the Manitoba Moose in the A.H.L. last week. Some expected he’d retire instead, but Schneider reported for duty.

There was also speculation in Canuckistan that Schneider might be a divisive influence among the Vancouver prospects. But Paul Wiecek of The Winnipeg Free Press learned that Schneider is hardly a disgruntled veteran playing out the string and cashing his checks. Instead, he’s a guy who just wants, and loves, to play.

“He seems to be relishing the opportunity,” Wiecek wrote after watching Schneider on Friday against the Hershey Bears. “He showed off a blue-line cannon that sounds like it still stings. And he did what he’s done best for two decades now, quarterback the power play on a night that saw him log a hefty 32 minutes and 26 seconds of ice time.”

“To be honest, the last five or six years have been the most fun of my career,” Schneider told Wiecek. “A large part of my career, I was waking up and having to prove something every day because that’s just life in the N.H.L.

“But at some point, you mature and you learn to be a professional and you learn to bring the same thing to the rink, no matter what, every day. You don’t get too excited when things are good, you don’t get too down when things are going bad.

“And that’s when the game gets fun, when it’s going out on the ice and just playing. And that’s where I am now. I just enjoy the challenges — whether it was in the N.H.L. or here, it’s just a lot of fun for me to play hockey right now.

“I absolutely wish I’d realized that years ago. I guess there’s just no way to do that — other than through experience. But could I have got to this point sooner? Absolutely. And I wish I had.”

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